Shogun

corridor. He was tall and heavyset, with wide flat eyes behind his mask. He saw the dead Brown and with a flick of his wrist he sent his spear flashing into the corpse, then retrieved it with the light chain attached to the end. Silently he re-coiled the chain, waiting, listening intently for any danger.

At length satisfied, he motioned at the darkness. Instantly twenty men poured out and rushed for the flight of steps, the long-forgotten back way to the floors above. These men carried assault tools. They were armed with chain knives, swords, and shuriken. And in the center of their black hoods was a red spot.

The leader did not watch them go, but kept his eyes on Yabu and began a slow finger count with his left hand. “One .?.?. two .?.?. three?.?.?.” Yabu felt many men watching him from the passage beyond the door. He could see no one.

Now the red-spot attackers were going up the stairs two at a time, and at the top of this flight they stopped. A door barred their path. They waited a moment then cautiously tried to open it. It was stuck. A man with an assault tool, a short steel bar, hooked at one end and chiseled at the other, came forward and jimmied it open. Beyond was another mildewed passage and they hurried along it silently. At the next corner they stopped. The first man peered around, then beckoned the others into another corridor. At the far end a sliver of light shone through a spyhole in the heavy wooden paneling that covered this secret door. He put an eye to it. He could see the breadth of the audience chamber, two Browns and two Grays wearily on sentry duty, guarding the door to the complex of quarters. He looked around, nodded to the others. One of the men was still counting with his fingers, timed to the leader’s count two floors below. All their eyes went to the count.

Below in the cellar, the leader’s fingers still continued in tempo, ticking off the moments, his eyes never wavering from Yabu. Yabu was watching and waiting, the smell of his own fear-sweat dank in his nostrils. The fingers stopped and the leader’s fist closed up sharply. He pointed down the corridor. Yabu nodded and turned and went back the way he had come, walking slowly. Behind him the inexorable count began again. “One .?.?. two .?.?. three?.?.?.”

Yabu knew the terrible risk he was taking but he had had no alternative and he cursed Mariko once more for forcing him onto Ishido’s side. Part of his bargain was that he had to open this secret door.

“What’s behind the door?” he had asked supiciously.

“Friends. This is the sign and the password is to say your name.”

“Then they kill me, neh?”

“No. You’re too valuable, Yabu-san. You’ve got to make sure the infiltration is covered.?.?.?.”

He had agreed but he had never bargained for ninja, the hated and feared semilegendary mercenaries who owed allegiance only to their secret, closely knit family units, who handed down their secrets only to blood kin—how to swim vast distances under water and scale almost smooth walls, how to make themselves invisible and stand for a day and a night without moving, and how to kill with their hands or feet or any and all weapons including poison, fire, and explosives. To ninja, violent death for pay was their only purpose in life.

Yabu managed to keep his pace measured as he walked away from the ninja leader along the corridor, his chest still hurting from the shock that the attack force was ninja and not ronin. Ishido must be mad, he told himself, all his senses teetering, expecting a spear or arrow or garrote any moment. Now he was almost at the corner. Then he turned it and, safe once more, he took to his heels and bounded up the stairs, three at a time. At the top, he raced down the arched corridor, then turned the corner heading toward the servants’ quarters.

The leader’s fingers still ticked off the moments, then the count stopped. He made a more urgent sign to the darkness, and rushed after Yabu. Twenty ninja followed him from the darkness and another fifteen took up defensive positions at both ends of the corridor to guard this escape route that led through a maze of forgotten cellars and passages honeycombing the castle to one of Ishido’s secret bolt holes under the moat, thence to the city.

Yabu was running fast now and he stumbled in the passageway, just managing to keep his footing, and burst through the servants’ quarters, scattering pots and pans and gourds and casks.

“Ninjaaaaaa!” he bellowed, which was not part of his agreement, but his own ruse to protect himself should he be betrayed. Hysterically the men and women scattered and took up the shout and tried to vanish under benches and tables as he raced across and out the other side, up more steps into one of the main corridors to meet the first of the Browns’ guards, who already had out their swords.

“Sound the alarm!” Yabu shouted. “Ninja—there are ninja among the servants!”

One samurai fled for the main staircase, the second rushed forward bravely to stand alone at the top of the winding steps that led below, sword raised. Seeing him, the servants came to a halt, then, moaning with terror, blindly huddled into the stones, their arms over their heads. Yabu ran on toward the main doorway and through it to stand on the steps. “Sound the alarm! We’re under attack!” he shouted as he had agreed to do, to signal the diversion outside which would cover the main attack through the secret door into the audience chamber, to kidnap Mariko and hurry her away before anyone was wiser.

Samurai on the gates and in the forecourt whirled around, not knowing where to guard, and at that moment the raiders in the garden swarmed out of their hiding places and engulfed the Browns outside. Yabu retreated into the foyer as other Browns came rushing down from the guardroom above to support the men outside.

A captain raced up to him. “What’s going on?”

“Ninja—outside and among the servants. Where’s Sumiyori?”

“I don’t know—in his room.”

Yabu leapt for the stairs as other men poured down. At that moment the first of the ninja from the cellars dashed past the servants to the attack. Barbed shuriken disposed of the lone defender, spears killed the servants. Then this force of raiders was in the main corridor, creating a violent shouting diversion, the milling frantic Browns not knowing where the next attack would spring from.

On the top floor the waiting ninja had ripped open their doors at the first alarm and rushed the last of the Browns who were hurrying below, killing them. With poison darts and shuriken, the ninja pressed their onslaught. The Browns were quickly overwhelmed, and the attackers jumped over the corpses to reach the main corridor on the floor below. A furious charge of Brown reinforcements was repulsed by the ninja, who whirled their weighted chains and cast them at the samurai, either strangling them or entangling their swords to make it easier to impale them with the double-edged knife. Shuriken flashed through the air and the Browns here were decimated. A few ninja were cut down but they crawled on like rabid animals and stopped attacking only when death took them completely.

In the garden the first rush of the defending reinforcements was easily thwarted as Browns poured from the main doorway. But another wave of Browns courageously mounted a second charge and swept the invaders back by sheer force of numbers. At a shouted order the raiders retreated, their jet-black clothes making them difficult targets. Exultantly the Browns rushed after them, into ambush, and were slaughtered.

The red-spot attackers were still lying in wait outside the audience room, their leader’s eye to the spyhole. He could see the anxious Browns and Blackthorne’s Grays, who were guarding the fortified door to the corridor, listening anxiously to the mounting holocaust below. The door opened and other guards, Browns and Grays, crowded the opening and then, no longer able to stand the waiting, officers of both groups ordered all their men out of the audience room to take up defensive positions at the far end of the corridor. Now the way was clear, the door of the inner corridor open, only the captain of Grays beside it, and he also was leaving. The red-spot leader saw a woman hurry up to the threshold, the tall barbarian with her, and he recognized his prey, other women collecting behind them.

Impatient to complete the mission and so relieve the pressure on his clansmen below, and whipped by his killing lust, the red-spot leader gave the signal and burst through his door an instant too soon.

Blackthorne saw him coming and automatically drew his pistol from under his kimono and fired. The back of the leader’s head disappeared, momentarily stopping the charge. Simultaneously, the captain of Grays rushed back and attacked with a mindless ferocity and cut down one ninja. Then the pack fell on the Gray and he died but these few seconds gave Blackthorne enough time to pull Mariko to safety and slam the door. Frantically he grabbed the iron bar and slid it into place just as ninja hurled themselves against it and others fanned out to hold the main doorway.